Butts, farts and bad days: a report from the front lines of parenting

I've had some interesting discussions with my daughter over the last few days. Well, discussions might be the wrong word. Judge for yourself.

1) I have recently taught Anna about the hilarity that ensues by replacing the last word of any song title with the word "ass." (except in her case, I chose the more kid-friendly "butt") She, of course, finds it boundlessly funny. One of her favorites is a song from Kate Bush's Aerial album "The Architect's Dream" which becomes, naturally, "The Architect's Butt." She's probably the only 9 year-old that knows ANY Kate Bush song. Anyway, on the way to her piano lesson the other night, she was applying 9 year-old logic to the game - that is, changing the last word of EVERY song to "butt" whether it made sense or not. I was about to bring this up when she said to me "Dad, everything is just a little bit funnier when you add the word 'butt.' It doesn't even have to make sense!" Now, who am I to argue with that?

2) On that same trip to her piano lesson, we carried on a long Cullinan tradition of changing the words of songs and making them about something gross, funny or both. Our victim this time was Madonna's "Sorry" from Confessions on a Dance Floor. The chorus of the song went from "I don't wanna hear/I don't wanna know/Please don't say you're sorry." to "I don't wanna smell/Your stinky farts/You'd better say you're sorry." It's not Shakespeare, but we sure laughed our asses butts off.



3) On a more serious note, Anna and I have a saying between the two of us that goes something like "don't let one bad thing ruin your whole day." We certainly didn't come up with it, but since we both deal with varying degrees of anxiety, it's a helpful thing to remember when the turkeys try to get you down. On the way to school this morning, she said "Dad, remember that 'don't let one bad thing ruin your whole day' thing we say? Well, I think I figured out what it means. It means that there's going to be bad things every day and you shouldn't let them ruin your life." Indeed. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.

I swear I won the kid lottery.